


Freefall

by homesickblues



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Athletes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 21:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7730338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homesickblues/pseuds/homesickblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s not, however, a perfectionist because of what his parents, or anyone for that matter, expect of him. He’s a perfectionist because he has that inexplicable drive of an Olympian to achieve something greater than himself. It’s like a fiery will to evolve as a human; to ascend to some legendary status that only comes from hard work, preservation, pushing himself to the point of breaking every single day. To be an athlete is to find your limit one day and to make your goal for the next day to push yourself harder than that. Repeat 365 days a year for four years.  </p><p>He wants to achieve greatness in the same way people dream of falling in love. </p><p>He dreamed of that too, once. But it was a mistake. </p><p>London was a mistake. Rio will be different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freefall

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by: ([x)](http://involuntaryorange.tumblr.com/image/148575117680)

Arthur left London with a silver medal and a broken heart.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive, yet don’t fully relate to one another.

He smiled through the medal ceremony, dimples and all, bowing his head to accept the clunky piece of metal the officials put around his neck before having to listen to the entirety of the Chinese anthem, seeing all of the excited waves and emotion taking place out of the corner of his eye as he stared forward into nothingness. There was a crowd of people in front of him; people with proud smiles and disappointed eyes. He’d failed them. He’d failed his parents. He’d failed his coach. He’d failed himself.

And the only reason any of that mattered to him was because he’d been distracted. He’d let icy-stone eyes and a crooked smile knock him off his game, ruin his concentration; ruin everything he’d been working for.

He suddenly embodied every poor-sportsman stereotype he’d always hated, having a mental breakdown over silver. Silver meant everything, but it wasn’t enough. Ten hours a day of training, making the slippery climb up to the ten meter platform back in Chula Vista with wrinkly fingers and adrenaline making his heart pound in his eats over and over again. The heart-stopping moment of freefall. The unrelenting cramps and Charlie horses that kept him up at night. It was all for nothing.

It was _all_ for nothing.

 

 

***

 

 

Rio will be different.

If Arthur trained for ten hours a day before London, he does twelve now. Some days it’s fourteen. One night two weeks out from the games at three in the morning, his coach Dom found him lying next to the edge of the pool, too weak to pick himself up and go to the locker room without help. ‘ _Asshole_ ,’ he’d said, _‘the point of it is to improve, not to kill yourself goddammit!’_

The thing is: Arthur’s a perfectionist. Most people he knows think it comes from his asshole parents that practically abandoned him to training camps at a startlingly young age, only ever showing up to scream at him about how little he _cares_ and how much harder he needs to try (NBC never did any heartwarming backstory montage about him before his meet, for good reason. Turns out no one wants to know about how much abuse goes into breeding and training a protégé). He’s not, however, a perfectionist because of what his parents, or anyone for that matter, expect of him. He’s a perfectionist because he has that inexplicable drive of an Olympian to achieve something greater than himself. It’s like a fiery will to evolve as a human; to ascend to some legendary status that only comes from hard work, preservation, pushing himself to the point of breaking every single day. To be an athlete is to find your limit one day and to make your goal for the next day to push yourself harder than that. Repeat 365 days a year for four years.  

He wants to achieve greatness in the same way people dream of falling in love.

He dreamed of that too, once. But it was a mistake.

London was a mistake. Rio will be different.

 

*

 

Arthur first saw Cedric Eames on the tiny television screen in his London hotel room. It was late, the night before the opening ceremony, and where an hour beforehand there existed a boisterous, drunken cacophony from all the rooms surrounding his, including the hallway, now existed a heavy silence. The TV was on purely as background noise. Arthur had his iPad about an inch away from his face, analyzing every detail of his dives from the previous day training at the center. He’d been getting used to the new platform, the new feel of the water as he descended into it, and he wanted to visualize the feel of all of it from watching himself in the video. He also scraped his gaze critically along the planes of his own body – lean and muscular and slightly gangly – pausing it mid-air to take notes on what he can do better.

Suddenly, the sound of insane screaming bellowed from the television and Arthur had let out a long-suffering sigh, setting his iPad down in his lap and focusing on the news-feature that had just come up that was profiling the British swim team.

The American swim team, a certain group of people he felt pretty isolated from, had garnered quite a bit of fame from some silly viral videos, and it appeared that England was attempting to hype their own swim team to the same extent of celebrity. They had hometown advantage, after all.

He didn’t really pay attention. Names and faces flashed by, and if he noticed anything about any of them, he immediately forgot. Handsome men and attractive women, all made to look like some kind of weird aliens with their caps and goggles on. He had too much on his mind, and his alarm was set for 4:30am to head to the diving center, so without much more fuss he turned off the TV and fell into the kind of deep sleep only athletes that burn over eight thousand calories a day can achieve.

 

 

Three days later, Arthur had nine days until his one day of solo competition. His synchronized competition loomed much closer, but he didn’t put much thought into it. It wasn’t his focus.

At the opening ceremony, he’d met and befriended a member of the US gymnastics team, Ariadne Reynolds, known for her tumbling and uneven bars, and she’d proceeded to drag his ass away from the comfort of the pool and the 10 meter platform to various events happening around Olympic village and the games at large. It was in the afternoon on a Monday and he’d spent the entire morning training, so he allowed her to drag him off to the other pool, the much more popular pool, in the building. They’d found a place amongst all of the hordes of people in the stands just as a 400m freestyle heat was coming to an end. It was still in the qualifying rounds, meaning the sixteen best times moved onto the semifinals, so no one was paying too much attention to what was happening, but rather chatting excitedly and taking pictures.

Ariadne had gotten them a rather close seat, as being on the gymnastics team comes with a decent amount of fame and at least three major brand deals, and when the heat ended and the times were announced, something caught his eye.

Someone, rather.

Tugging off his cap and goggles, Arthur could make out a familiar face he vaguely recognized from the news program several nights before, sort of in the same way one remembers a face from a dream. This swimmer had gotten the third best time and was quickly congratulating the swimmers around him with slapped handshakes, drifting his way over the floating barriers over to the side of the pool to swim out. When he did, Arthur hungrily eyed the broad expanse of his shoulders and chest, the muscular thickness of his neck, the long, narrowness of his abdomen all the way to his strong, lean calves. His arms, gorgeous and tanned and thick themselves, were stenciled in black ink that swirled and etched its way down into intricate patterns and designs that Arthur struggled to find meaning in.

He watched helplessly as the man padded over right in front of him, smiling and waving at the crowd behind as he snatched up a towel and ran it through his hair.

“Isn’t he gorgeous?” Ariadne whispered, and Arthur barely had time to give her a scandalized look before she called out to him. “Hey! Eames!”

The man’s head shot up and he blinked up at them. They were so close that Arthur could make out the way his wet, thick eyelashes stuck together in clumps.

“’Ello there, Ariadne! I see we finally meet after months of brilliant twitter banter.”

Ariadne grinned and jumped out of her seat, grabbing Arthur’s arm and yanking him down to the barricade to meet Eames. Arthur followed, powerless, his eyes locked onto Eames like some kind of beacon. Up close, he could make out the marbled blueish grey of his eyes and the way his teeth were a bit wonky in an endearing way. His face was shaved smooth, but he had a smile that begged for some kind of stubble. His skin was dotted with droplets of water, glistening under the harsh camera flashes and overhead lighting.

“You were great out there,” Ariadne continued once they were closer. “You’re definitely going into the semi-finals.”

“Well unless everyone in the next heat gets a better time than me… it’s likely.” Eames grinned and moved his eyes slightly toward Arthur and Arthur felt his heart haphazardly stuff itself into his throat.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Eames offered kindly, sticking out his still-wet hand. “Cedric Eames.”

“I know,” Arthur said dumbly before swallowing and steadying himself. “I mean, I heard them call your name when you got third.”

Eames smiled and lifted an expectant eyebrow. Arthur stayed silent, his throat closing up in a way no competitive nerves ever had made it before.

“This is Arthur Cohen,” Ariadne interjected before the silence could morph into something awkward enough to haunt Arthur’s worst nightmares. “He’s a 10 meter diver. He’s kind of the best.”

Eames’s timid smile broke out into a full-blown grin and he reached over the barricade and slapped Arthur’s shoulder.

“Brilliant! And you compete on Wednesday?”

“In synchronized, but it’s not my expertise. Next Wednesday’s my singles competition,” Arthur corrected. “At noon.”

“Right. Well.” Eames’s eyes were settled on Arthur’s face, and Arthur felt like all the bones in his body were turning into malleable wax. He struggled to keep his posture stiff. “Good luck then.”

“Good luck to you too.” Arthur nodded toward the pool.

Eames snorted.

“Thanks… you Americans are a tough lot to beat, you know that? I’ll let you know how well I fair _after_ Phelps retires, how ‘bout that?”

Arthur smiled, and Eames’s eyes softened.

“See you around, Arthur?”

The smile stayed on Arthur’s face. In his periphery he could almost see Ariadne gaping at it, as she hadn’t yet really experienced it fully. It was a rare occurrence.

“Yeah.” Arthur nodded. Eames leaned in closer over the barricade.

“That was an official invitation to see me around more, Arthur. I do hope you take it.”

Eames, infuriatingly, _winked_ , before blowing a kiss to Ariadne and turning, pulling his Union Jack-themed jacket and sweatpants back on and putting his headphones on his head, stalking off to go mingle with the rest of his team while the second heat took place.

 

***

 

The flight to Rio is abhorrent, but Arthur gets lost in the classical mix he made himself for downtime as well as some light conversation with the other six members of the US Diving Team that he decided to fly down with. None of them are particularly close, as they’d mostly been spread out at various different training facilities and only get to spend time together at meets, but they know each other well enough to attempt to make light of the cramped economy class seats and the shitty plane food.

Rio, however, is not abhorrent. Brazil rolls out before him as he steps off of the plane like some glistening symbol of hope, everything seeming to tremble slightly in the hot, humid air as if it only exists in a dream. Twenty-one year old Arthur had seen London as a platform for his greatness. Nothing but a backdrop. But to twenty-five year old Arthur, Rio is the setting of his redemption; of proving that he isn’t some second-rate athlete; that he’s deserving of a gold medal. A true Olympian, and no broad shoulders or plush lips or gravelly voice can take that away from him again.

The first night, he trains. He spends six hours at the pool and six at the gym, doing sprints on the treadmill and hundreds of curl-ups on the bar. If anything, his body’s much more toned for this game, and he can be proud to watch the videos of himself in Olympic reruns for months to come.

He doesn’t see Eames. He doesn’t try to see Eames, regardless of the fact that he knows he’s there, lurking somewhere around the Olympic Village.

The second night, the opening ceremony goes until late, and he lets himself have fun. Ariadne finds him immediately after they walk out in the parade of nations and forces him to dance with her, and he does obligingly (they have, after all, been rooming with each other near their now-shared training center for a little over two years and she’d sabotage him somehow if he didn’t indulge her, he’s sure of it). The music is deafening and the pulse runs through his whole body, electrifying him.

After, there’s utter chaos. It seems that it started out as many small parties that somehow morph into one large party, all congregated down in the main area of the village by the pools in front of the towering buildings, but with people also hanging over balconies and screaming. Arthur wonders briefly as he watches several cyclists take an upside-down tequila shot what the world would think of all of their treasured athletes if they saw them now.

Instead of engaging, he decides to babysit Ariadne, who had informed him that she was now old enough to get ‘sloppy white girl drunk’ before chasing after a guy with a suspicious bottle of jungle juice.

Eventually they find Yusuf, who Ariadne’s been dating off and on long distance since the last games, and he seems to take over making sure she doesn’t hurt herself. So Arthur allows himself to get distracted by some idiots doing backflips off of one of the lower balconies and into the pool as if they aren’t risking their Olympic careers and their entire lives by doing so. But when he hears Ariadne squeal, he knows it’s too late. He doesn’t even have to look to know who she’s hurling herself towards.

 

***

 

The next night, Ariadne showed up at his door with a wicked grin and a hotel key card dangling between her fingers.

“Guess _whaaaat_ ,” she sang, wiggling the card in Arthur’s face.

“You’re really excited about going back to your room and sleeping?” Arthur deadpanned.

“It’s eight, Arthur. Do you need a walker? Will you be applying for Medicare soon? _No_ , idiot, I’ve got the room key to one of the English swim team boys’ room. They’re having a get-together.”

Arthur’s mouth fell agape as he stared down at the nondescript card in her hand.

“You’re joking, right?”

“Absolutely one-hundred-percent _not_ joking.”

“You’re _seventeen_.”

“I’m not gonna have them gangbang me or something, Arthur. Loads of people are gonna be there. Eames just gave me the invite.”

 _Eames_. That word ended all arguments in his mind, and instead of catching an early night so he could go and train at the gym the next morning, Arthur found himself sitting cross-legged on a stiff hotel couch watching a bunch of tall men with mountainous shoulders drink virgin margaritas and play ‘never have I ever’. Eames was perched across the coffee table from him, his eyes bright with laughter, occasionally ducking down to stretch his long arms or do a dozen push-ups. Every time he did so, Arthur would try to rip his eyes away from the rippling muscles under taut tanned flesh but found it near impossible. Luckily, no one else seemed to notice, though once or twice Eames would catch his eye and his smile would brighten at how purple Arthur would turn.

Soon Arthur would smile too, and it became more of a game than the actual game they were both vaguely taking part in. Every time their eyes met Arthur felt like someone had attached a livewire to his central nervous system. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Arthur let himself _want_ something that wasn’t glory. That wasn’t a gold medal. This kind of want was primal; gentler than the bone-aching want of victory, but somehow more intoxicating.

“Arthur?” A deep voice came from beside him and Arthur snapped his head to the right, blinking at Yusuf, a South African fencing champion, lifting an eyebrow at him. “It’s your turn, mate.”

“Ah.” Arthur cleared his throat and sat up straight, a million options running through his head at once, all of them pertaining to how he could subtly let Eames know that he wanted to be alone with him at some point in the near future. He tried to control his raging heartbeat while he summoned the courage to look directly across at Eames before saying: “Never have I ever hooked up with another Olympic athlete.”

 _Change that_ , he willed at Eames as everyone giggled and various people put fingers down with sly smiles.

Eames didn’t take his eyes off of Arthur as he smirked put down his pointer finger. His friends around him whooped and hollered, shoving him playfully and making kissy faces at him, but he shrugged them off with a laugh.

When ten rolled around and various people started filing out after yawning and announcing that they have an early morning ahead, Ariadne tugged at Arthur’s arm to leave as well, having sufficiently filled her flirt-quota with fencer boy Yusuf. Before they could get to the door, Arthur felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Ariadne, do you mind if I borrow your Arthur for a bit? I’d really like to show him something.” Eames’s voice sent shivers down Arthur’s spine and the blood rushing to his cock.

Ariadne looked between the two of them and snorted.

“Fine. Just remember that Arthur normally gets up at 4 in the morning to train…”

“Thanks, mom.” Arthur gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll text you in the morning.”

Before he could watch her leave, Eames was leading him the other direction down the hallway with his hand still firmly on his shoulder. He reached around Arthur once they arrived at a door near the end and pressed a keycard up against the reader, letting them inside.

Something inexplicable possessed Arthur and without an ounce of thought or reasoning, he was pressing Eames back up against the door, sliding their lips together and moving his hands hungrily over the long planes of his body. Eames growled surreptitiously into Arthur’s mouth, nipping at his bottom lip and pawing at his ass with just as much want that Arthur felt dizzy.

“I looked up YouTube videos of you,” Eames muttered between biting kisses, moving them expertly backwards toward the expanse of the freshly-made hotel bed behind them. “Watched you plummeting through the air in that tiny pair of red white and blue briefs and that gorgeous body of yours. _Fucking hell_.”

Eames spun them just as they reached the bed, sitting and pulling Arthur onto him. Arthur yanked off the t-shirt Eames was wearing, tossing it behind him, anxious to feel nothing but skin.

Once no clothes remained to bar them from each other, Arthur tackled Eames backwards, smothering him with kisses and mussing his hair. Eames looked up at him with a certain intensity in his eyes and Arthur felt naked. Well, he was technically _naked_ , but naked in a different sense. Something he didn’t expect to feel during lust-driven fuck session. It’s like Eames saw him; stripped away all the bullshit and pretense and actually _saw_ him. Arthur was high off of it. Eames wanted _Arthur_. Not Arthur the diver. Not Arthur the Olympian. He wanted _Arthur_.

“ _Darling_ ,” Eames moaned into the shell of Arthur’s ear, and Arthur was gone, floating off in some other dimension far, far from the earth he’s suffered.

 

 

After, in the hazy fog of post-coital bliss, Arthur watched with heavy-lids as Eames slid out of bed and walked into the bathroom ( _oh my fucking god, did I really just sleep with someone with an ass that looks like_ that _??_ ) and disposed of his condom (his _second_ of the night… Arthur thanked god for the excessive amount of condoms the Olympic committee had given all of them… even if it was enough to make it into a scandalous Daily Mail headline).

When Eames turned and made his way back, silhouetted by the vague lights from the city leaking in through the window, Arthur felt himself turn to putty all over again. Eames was disheveled: his hair sticking up in endearing places, his lips swollen and red, his wide chest still flushed a satisfying color of pink… He smiled when he noticed Arthur watching him and crawled back into bed, wrapping his arms around Arthur and tugging him close.

After a few moments of contented silence – Arthur feeling lulled into some sort of daze from the steady rhythms of Eames’s heart and strong lungs – something dawned on him and he froze.

“You compete tomorrow,” Arthur whispered, looking up at him. “You should be sleeping.”

Eames chuckled, pressing his lips down into Arthur’s hair.

“I think that counts as training, don’t you? Or at least some fancy form of muscle therapy. Some of my mates pay to put sheep placentas and shit on their skin… I’ll settle with shagging the most gorgeous American diver I’ve ever seen.”

Arthur snorted. “It’s not a very long list to choose from.”

“Fine… American _athlete_. Athlete. Man. _Human_.”

Arthur kissed him in response; the kind of kiss that goes on forever because time comes to a screeching halt because of it. 

“You could stay here tonight, if you like,” Eames whispered against his lips. “We can both get up at four to go train.”

Arthur had the very clear thought that he _shouldn’t_. Waiting for him back in his own room were all of the items he’ll need to train. His swimming briefs. His iPad with all of his past performances, all of his notes criticizing himself, his body, his mindset…

Staying in Eames’s warm arms, unsurprisingly, appealed to him more. He closed his eyes.

“Five,” he yawned. “We’re getting up at _five_.”

Arthur closed his eyes and felt Eames press one more kiss to his lips before he drifted back to that otherworldly place he reached before, falling unconscious.

 

***

 

Eames has changed in ways Arthur only notices because he’s spent the last four years unwittingly remembering every detail of him like a portrait in his brain he can’t seem to get rid of, no matter how hard he tries. He’s more muscular, somehow. His face has lost its boyishness and has been replaced with the face of a twenty-nine year old grown man with harder eyes and just a bit of stubble gracing his jaw. Arthur feels weak at the knees, and to compensate he puffs his chest a bit, squaring his shoulders and setting his mouth in a firm line.

Eames welcomes Ariadne with one of his devious grins and open arms, picking her up and spinning her around when she reaches him.

“ _There_ you are, you pompous British dickhead!! I’ve been looking for you and you haven’t answered any of my texts.” She jams her finger into his chest for emphasis, but Eames merely chuckles and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“It’s the Olympics, love. I’ve been busy.”

He looks unusually tired, and he pointedly doesn’t look at Arthur. Something about that makes something catch flame inside of Arthur and grit his teeth. _How dare he?_ Four years later, Arthur realizes then, the wounds haven’t closed yet.

“Hey,” he says suddenly, stepping forward, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Eames swallows visibly and looks up at him, his face a bit slack with some emotion that Arthur can’t name.

“Arthur,” Eames says softly, the corners of his lips lifting. “Lovely to see you.”

“Yeah.” Arthur hardens his stare, having stormed into this not having a plan for what to say or do. Instead, he looks at Ariadne. “I’m going to the gym, this isn’t my scene. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He turns and charges away, hearing a protest getting caught in Ariadne’s throat as she stares helplessly after him.

When he reaches the front door of the building he’s staying in, he hears someone jog up behind him.

“Arthur, wait.”

Arthur closes his eyes, trying to prepare himself for the four-years-too-late confrontation he never wanted to have.

 

***

 

On Friday, Arthur competed in the qualifying rounds of synchronized diving with his unfocused, wide-eyed partner Robert Fischer. They didn’t qualify for the semifinals, and Arthur wasn’t surprised or upset. Robert was a useless partner and Dom had forced them together, insisting that Robert would suit Arthur perfectly. But as it happened, Robert couldn’t hold a curl or dive in a perfect vertical line to save his life. So they got sixth and Arthur showered and dressed faster than he ever had in his life and caught a taxi to meet Eames for dinner at a cozy little pub just off of Trafalgar square called the Chandos.

(He couldn’t help but smile at the Olympic commentators on the radio in the cab: ‘ _Arthur Cohen shone in all of the rounds today… it was simply his partner who couldn’t keep up to him. We’ll see Arthur take home gold at the Men’s individuals a week from today, I’m sure.’_ )

When he walked into where Eames told him to meet him, he was met with what looks like a rather lively bar, but not a “cozy pub” like he was promised. Arthur sighed, desperately wanting more of a casual setting where he can snuggle up to the guy he’s been sleeping with for four days without having to worry about paparazzi or nosy patrons.

After about five seconds of standing in the doorway, pouting, the bartender waved at him.

“Oi!” He whistled until Arthur looked at him, and then he pointed up some stairs near the back. Arthur lifted an eyebrow at him but nodded, heading up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, behind a door, was a charmingly cozy pub with big red couches and a vague 90’s rock station playing in the background. Eames was sitting on the arm of one of the couches near the back. He looked up from his phone and beamed when he saw Arthur, getting up and making his way over to him in three big strides, pulling him in for a kiss.

“Hello,” Eames muttered against his lips. Arthur nipped a bit at his bottom one, smiling.

“Hello.”

“Glad to see Owen remembered to direct you up here.” He led Arthur back to his couch in the corner, arm firmly around his waist. Arthur leaned into the touch like a man starved of warmth near a fire. No one was around them – and the few that were marginally around them paid them no attention.

After cheating viciously on _both_ of their strict diets (‘ _Listen, we both finished a match today and have the weekend off. We’ll just train extra hard tomorrow.’_ ) with fish and chips and steak and ale pies, Arthur found himself snug against Eames’s side, their legs carelessly tangled in front of them.

“D’you know,” Eames spoke softly, not as if he was worried someone else would hear, but like he wanted Arthur to be the only one to ever know his words, “that I quite like you.”

Arthur tossed the words around his mind for a quiet moment, letting them rattle around like a pair of dice waiting to land on something that will guide him toward how any of this could possibly be happening. He never imagined himself in love – it was something he almost scoffed at, thinking of people _falling in love_ after a solid hour of curl-ups, every muscle in his body screaming in agony. Pain… pain is what he knew to be real. Pain and victory.

When he was younger, still a dreamer in some sense, he imagined love being slow. Something that starts like a couple of shy embers and builds its way into a raging forest fire. Not, by any means, something that hits you like a runaway freight train at an intersection.

Eames was a welcome distraction from years and years of nothing _but_ pain. Admittedly, maybe at a bad time, but he knew that he’d trained hard enough. _He had this_. He had his gold, he was sure of it. Now he wanted Eames.

“I like you too.” Arthur announced quietly, smiling up at him. Eames traced his finger gently over each of Arthur’s dimples, leaning down to meet his smile with a fleeting kiss.

He decided in that moment that he’ll leave London with a gold medal _and_ Eames. That he didn’t have to choose between happiness and glory. He could have both.

 

***

 

“Let me just explain-” Eames sounds wrecked; probably a mixture of breathing chlorine for hours and jetlag. Arthur doesn’t care. He doesn’t.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Arthur replies over his shoulder without turning, because he really has nothing to say.

He hears rather than sees Eames stop dead in his tracks. He closes his eyes for a moment – just a moment – before opening the door in front of him and walking calmly inside, not looking back to see if Eames is still standing there or if he’s decided to let it go and move on as well.

It isn’t until he reaches his room that he finally breathes again, his lungs straining and burning for oxygen like they’ve been deprived of it for four years.

 

***

 

Tuesday. Eames traced invisible patterns into Arthur’s bare back, ghosting his finger so gently over his spine that Arthur shivered.

“You know that moment before you dive,” Eames said quietly, “or before I jump in the pool? When the world just goes quiet, everything else fades like it was never there in the first place… and it’s just you, and what’s in front of you, and that’s it?”

Arthur swallowed and nodded, turning his head resting on his folded arms just enough to squint at Eames through the opaque blackness of his dark hotel room, making out the deep pools of his eyes glinting against the sliver of city light leaking through the curtains.

Eames leaned in, pressing his warm lips against Arthur’s forehead. “That’s how I feel when I’m with you. The world goes quiet and there’s just you and me. It’s bloody mad…”

Arthur reached up blindly, glad when his palm gently connected with smooth, lightly stubbed skin. He ran the pad of his thumb over Eames’s cheek, pulling him impossibly close and tilting his head up. Once they were nose to nose, Arthur looked into the darkness where Eames eyes should be, now blocked entirely from any source of light.

“I feel the same way,” he whispered. “And I can’t explain it and it makes _no_ sense.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Eames rumbled. “Let’s make a thing of this, yeah? After the games? Stay in London for a while?”

Arthur considered the implausibility of it, but after competitions Dom allowed him a three week break to recuperate before the training regimen kicked in again. He could manage three weeks. And then… and then they could figure it out.

“Yes,” Arthur said, because he didn’t know how to refuse Eames anything. “After we win our gold, we’ll figure it out.”

Arthur could feel Eames’s smile form under his palm. Just the thought of its presence made everything that much brighter; the stars that much closer.

They could do it, he told himself. They could figure this out. Figure _them_ out.

 

***

 

The day of Eames’s big race – the 400m freestyle – Arthur busies himself with everything under the sun. Training, jogging, exploring Rio, doing interviews, reading, sunbathing… it’s an effective method of pushing out everything he doesn’t want to think about from his mind and replacing it with static.

It’s at the cantina at the end of the day, after eating two grilled chicken breasts and some kind of delicious plantain dish, that he happens to glance up at a television in time to see a gold medal being placed around Eames’s neck. Eames grins wide – the grin that’s haunted Arthur for years – and closes his eyes to relish the feeling of it all. Something sour churns in Arthur’s gut while he watches Eames mouth the words to _God Save the Queen_ with his hand over his heart, heavy chunk of gold resting against his diaphragm.

When he looks back down at his food, all hunger dissolved into a feeling of bitter nausea, he can’t seem to stand and throw it away fast enough. He turns on his heel and hurries toward the exit, feeling like he might actually vomit just to rid himself of some sort of metaphorical impurities, but before he can step out the door, someone steps in front of him.

 _Dammit_ , Arthur thinks, realizing that the medal ceremony he just witnessed must have been a rerun from earlier in the evening.

The gold medal’s gone from Eames’s chest and he’s wearing his casuals: a tight Team GB shirt and sweats.

“Arthur,” he says sternly. “We really need to talk.”

“I already told you,” Arthur mumbles, refusing to look up at him. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then let me do all the talking,” Eames all but begs, and when Arthur finally does look up at him, he notices that his face is twisted into something akin to pain.

He still doesn’t know how to refuse Eames anything. He never learned. He never thought he’d need to learn.

“Then talk.” Arthur pushes past him and walks out into the muggy Brazilian night air, slowing his pace and allowing Eames to fall in stride with him.

 

***

 

On Thursday, Arthur found Ariadne saving him a seat, which he was thankful for as the stands were practically overflowing with humanity of all sorts: paparazzi, press, fans, family, and other athletes, all crammed into one place to see one of the most hyped-up finals of the games.

Once Arthur was seated he squinted down at the floor, much further away from him than the first time he watched Eames swim. Eames was standing behind his diving board, shrugging out of his jacket and fidgeting with his goggles. He looked nervous, an emotion Arthur had never experienced written across his face before, but at the same time it was a tell that most people probably couldn’t identify. Arthur noted the way Eames’s hands jittered, the way he bounced up on the balls of his feet before rocking forward to his toes. He wanted to clamber over the crowd and barricade and take him into his arms, comfort him, tell him that it would be okay, that he’d win his gold and they could ride off into the sunset together or whatever people who were young and in love did. But he couldn’t, so he stayed put, but smiled at the knowledge that what Eames was likely listening to in his headphones, looking so stony-faced and serious, was the Tarzan soundtrack.

Arthur knew Eames wasn’t his boyfriend. He’d be naïve to think of it that way, but he knew Eames was his _something_. And he was Eames’s _something_. The sheer knowledge of it was enough to make Arthur feel that quiet Eames had mentioned that night; the feeling of being the only two people in the room despite being surrounded by thousands, watched by millions. He was Eames’s _something_ and they had a future _somewhere._

 _Do it for me_ , Arthur thought selfishly, watching closely as Eames put on his goggles and pulled his cap on over his hair. _Do it for us._

The swimmers took their places on the boards, one toe pointed and one toe back resting against the lip. Eames’s shoulders lifted once and then fell, the last deep, steadying breath before the plunge. The quiet.

Then the buzzer sounded, and they were under the water.

Arthur rose to his feet, keeping his eyes trained on the semblance of blurry colors and splashes that was Eames. After the first fifty meters, he was third. Then at two hundred, he was second.

After kicking off for the last length, Eames took off, breaking free of the current first place holder and moving forward into a league of his own entirely, dancing with the world record line projected on the large screen above them. Arthur clenched his fists by his side, dizzy from lack of breathing, but then Eames touched the wall. Eames won his gold.

Arthur hugged Ariadne, feeling her arms around him first and giving into the adrenaline coursing haphazardly through his veins, picking her up and squeezing her. He was half a mind to rush down to the barricade, to will Eames over to him after his gaggle of press interviews and throw his arms around him, hold onto him for dear life while his breathing returned to normal.

But then his eyes happened upon the screen again. The camera was trained on a very attractive young women with brown waves draped over her shoulders, a hand clutched over her mouth as tears streamed down her face. Beside her were two very excited middle-aged people wearing “EAMES OF DREAMS” t-shirts, bouncing up and down and screaming.

Then the subtitles came on the screen.

‘ _Stuart and Nora Eames, parents. Jacqueline Stone, fiancée_.’

 _What an odd typo_ , Arthur thought outright, because he still had the taste of Eames on his lips, the feel of Eames all around him, under him, over him, _inside_ of him…

Eames was surrounded by teammates, reporters and coaches. Unavailable for an interview just yet. So they headed over to the people still being shown in the screen.

“Jackie,” the reporter said in a familiar sort of way, “how does it feel to be engaged to an Olympic gold medalist?”

Between sobs, the beautiful woman gasped into the microphone: “I can’t even describe it. I can’t. I’m so proud of him.”

 _I’m dreaming_ , was Arthur’s next thought, because he still could see Eames’s eyes in the darkness of the hotel room, hear his words whispered into his skin. _That’s how I feel when I’m with you_ …

His next thought was to look at Eames. He caught a glimpse of a slack-jawed face through the enclosed cheering circle around him. And then a smile. And then Arthur looked away.

Next to him, Ariadne stood listless, her eyes wide and her hands clasped over her mouth in shock.

“Did you know?” Arthur said in a rush. Ariadne shook her head.

“I thought… I assumed they were over… oh _Arthur_ …”

She reached out to touch him, to offer him some sort of support as his world fell to pieces in front of him, but he flinched away from her as if he’d been slapped, turning and sprinting up the steps toward the exit.

“I have to train,” he called over his shoulder.

 

***

 

For a while, there’s no talking. Simply the distant sounds of the city, the nearby crashing of waves, some muffled music coming from one of the apartments in the towers above, and the sound of footfall on concrete beneath them. Arthur has his arms crossed behind his back and his posture straight, staring directly ahead with a blank expression. When Eames finally speaks, it nearly startles him.

“What happened four years ago was a mistake.”

Arthur nearly stops, pivots, and lands a punch right in Eames’s magazine cover-perfect face right then and there.

“You went to all this trouble,” he snarls, “to find me and tell me something I already fucking know? It _was_ a mistake. You were a mistake.”

Eames lets out a puff of exasperated air and shakes his head. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant what I did to you. It was a mistake.”

“Forgetting to tell me you were _engaged_? Going on to fuck me whenever you pleased like your own personal slut? Making promises you never intended to keep? Yeah, pretty fucking huge mis-”

“I fucked up, okay?” Eames rounds on him, placing his hands on Arthur’s shoulders and stopping him dead in his tracks.

Arthur opens his mouth to say something – say anything. But all the vile phrases, all the insults, the blame, the anger gets caught in his throat before it can escape into the damp breeze. So Eames continues.

“I wasn’t out.” The words take a few full seconds to process in Arthur’s mind before they sink in. “I wasn’t out, to the press or my friends or my family or anyone, and I got engaged to Jackie when I was still thinking that I was straight and could bloody well work through my ‘issues’ without much fuss… but I couldn’t. And then you came along… _yes_ , I cheated on her. And _yes_ , I lied to you. I hate myself for both. But I also cheated myself, and I lied to myself in thinking that I could get away with it.”

He looks down, chest heaving as if he’s just finished the fastest race of his life, eyes closed tightly. Arthur feels lost in space.

“She wasn’t supposed to be there… she had a business trip in Sydney and I guess got back early and showed up to surprise me. She was a swimmer too back in the day, but she blew out her knee and ended her career. Until you came along, I thought I could continue playing jenga with all these lies and secrets in my life, but you… you hit me like a hurricane.

“I had it all planned out. After the games, I was going to break it off with Jackie, publically come out, and convince you to stay in London with me, or figure out how to come live in the states with you. It was like this fantasy.” Eames laughs desperately. “I even envisioned it at the finish line during my race. A life with you. A life being out and _proud_ with you. It pushed me there. It won me that gold. _You_ won me that gold. But then she was there, and you were gone, and everything else happened so bloody fast…”

Arthur gapes at him in shock, mind reeling through all of the events from four years ago he’d tried so hard to forget, now at the front of his brain: crystal-clear and vivid.

 

***

 

Ten meters above the chemical-blue pool below, Arthur felt a sense of vertigo for the first time in his life. The pool seemed to get farther and farther away, darker somehow, like something unknown was lurking at the bottom, waiting for him to plunge down.

His whole life had been leading up to this single moment. He was at the top of the charts by over two points, and the last round was going to either make or break him. Among the dispersed crowd fell a hush, no one wanting to breathe let alone distract Arthur from doing what he was born to do.

It was a complex dive, but one he’d done a thousand times before. Standing on the edge of the platform, toes hanging off the edge, he pictured that woman from the day before. Jacqueline. He pictured her and Eames dipping off to some pleasant seaside cottage in their late thirties after retirement, having a couple of picture-perfect children and growing old together.

His fists clenched and unclenched at his side while he waited for the official countdown.

 _This is all you’re good for_ , a voice in his head snarled out of nowhere. _The only way you could ever be loved is by how well you compete._ It was his dad’s voice, mangled and distorted but _there_ , screaming down at a six-year-old Arthur struggling to gather the courage to jump off of just a simple amateur diving board into the deep scary pool below, shaking viciously in his swim trunks and goggles. Six-year-old Arthur looked down at the dark pool, imagining some dark monster lurking at the bottom, waiting to eat him whole.

 _Nothing. Exists. But this._ the voice said.

 _DO IT_ , the voice screamed.

Clenching his teeth, his heart racing, he turned with his back to the fall, bearing his weight down on the platform, using the momentum to launch himself up and over, wondering if the monster’s going to be waiting for him at the bottom of the pool to really eat him this time.

 

***

 

“I looked for you, after.” Eames rubs ruefully at his right deltoid, avoiding Arthur’s eyes. “I carried out phase one of my plan. I split it off with Jackie and went to find you, praying to something, _anything,_ that you hadn’t seen the race. But of course you had, and you were already gone. You didn’t even go to the closing ceremony, and I couldn’t get ahold of you afterward.”

Arthur remembers what happened after that medal ceremony vividly. He practically sprinted back to his hotel room, vomited, packed, and left on an early flight without telling anyone.

“Long story short, I’m sorry.” Eames sighs, smearing a large hand over his face and looking up at the starry sky. “From the very bottom of my heart, I’m sorry, Arthur. Thank you for listening.”

Arthur stays quiet, hyper-focused on the rising and falling of Eames’s chest beside him, the quiet _whirr_ of air entering and leaving his lungs. It’s soothing, but his brain is still full of static from earlier. Too much static. He curls his fingers into his hair and turns away from Eames, blinking hard, trying to reconcile everything. Trying to reconcile that Eames, in some strange way, might be a _victim_ in this whole situation. A victim of circumstance, if nothing else.

After what seems like a century, Arthur feels ready to face the truth that he’s been kept from for four years, ask questions, finally understand why such a thing happened to him. To them. But when he turns around, he finds nothing but the empty grounds of the Olympic Village and a few late-nighters stumbling back to their apartments. Eames is gone… he possibly fled when he thought Arthur was about to go nuclear on him. Arthur scoffs, thinking that maybe he’s really dreaming this time and his subconscious is working over-time to make up some story to glue the pieces of his life back together.

That night he dreams about dark hotel rooms, lingering kisses and whispered nothings into the shell of his ear. Even dreaming, he aches.

 

 

The morning of his final competition, Arthur wakes up from a nightmare of falling in a cold sweat to a frantic pounding at his door. Dazed, he stumbles out of bed and swings it open, blinking down at a very frazzled-looking Ariadne.

“I fucked up,” she says, pushing past him and into the room. Arthur squints at her, mouthing a confused ‘ _Whaa?’_ before closing the door and following her.

“I fucked up,” she repeats. “When we moved in together, I told Eames about it. We’d been texting and skyping a bit, but nothing major. He explained everything to me, and I chose not to tell you. I chose to keep it from you because I wanted to protect you. I didn’t really trust him after what he did because he lied to me too, he lied to everyone, but now I’m _freaking out_ because these last few days I’ve watched how unhappy you are, and how unhappy he is, and I think I ruined your last chance at happiness and _god_ , why am I such an idiot!? When you two met it was like the center of the fucking universe or something!”

Arthur stares at her as if she just dragged a shiny green alien into his hotel room. His reaction to her words is delayed, but it hits him like a sledgehammer.

“You… knew?”

“ _Yes_. Arthur, I’m so sorry. I fucked up, _I fucked up_ , I’m _so, so sorry_.”

He barely hears her, though. His ears are ringing and it feels as if his heart’s pounding up against his tonsils.

It’s just then when not only does his alarm begin blaring, alerting him that it’s 6:30am, but Dom bursts into his room, reeking of savory coffee and cologne, wearing his dead morning eyes but jittering from the caffeine.

“Morning Ariadne. It’s time for Arthur to go to the pool so we can work a few things.”

Right. Finals. Gold medal. Fame. Glory.

“I’ll talk to you later, Ari,” Arthur grits out, grabbing his training bag and his phone off of his bedside table.

“Arthur,” she pleads, grabbing his hand.

“Later,” he promises her, shuffling into the bathroom to grab his razor, toothbrush, deodorant, as well as the thick waterproof hair gel he uses to glue his hair back to his head, stuffing them into his bag before following Dom out of the room.

 

 

He can’t concentrate through practice. Or rather, he doesn’t. His head feels like it’s full of some kind of jumbled cluster of half-conscious thoughts and revelations, not quite coming to the front to form into something coherent. He tries to piece things together as he slides, flips and spins through the warm Rio air in freefall, his body aligning perfectly into every angle, every position as if it’s something encoded into his DNA rather than learned.

After a long sit in the hot tub and a massage, it’s game time. Do or die. Float or sink. His legs have never felt more like jell-o.

 

 

Round after round after round, Arthur remains in deadlock with the Chinese heavyweight with the Brits right on his tail. He’s on his best game, however, producing stunning dive after stunning dive. 9’s and 9.5’s. It’s just not quite enough to push him into first.

Finally the last round comes along. Arthur’s a mere point behind the Chinese leader, and the last to go. Britain now sits at a comfortable second unless Arthur really fucks up, which he doesn’t put past himself.

As he climbs the stairs back to the top, several thoughts run through his head.

The truth hung in front of him like a glorified billboard, flashing and glaring: Eames tried to apologize years ago, but couldn’t.

Arthur’s never really been _in_ the closet because it’s never been important. He’s never hid that fact about himself, and it’s never been a big deal in the diving community. Plenty of fellow divers he’s met at meets, tournaments and championships have been gay, bisexual, transgender, asexual, etc. One of the most famous divers in the world and Arthur’s opponent, Tom Daley, came out years ago and the only difference it made was that many young British girls cried about it on social media. It’s a much more open community, he assumes, than swimming. Swimming’s always been riddled with misogyny (he just saw a headline the day before about how much a female gold medalist ‘swims like a man’), so it would only be natural to assume that homophobia would be engrained in that culture as well.

Eames was hiding, and Arthur had nudged him out of his box, offering him some glimpse of a happy, free future.

With this realization comes another: Eames _did_ love him. He wouldn’t have risked the judgement of the swimming community, his country, his family, the woman he’d been lying to, if the _something_ that they’d had wasn’t real.

They had a week together. Eight days, to be exact. Anyone else would scoff at feelings rising and overflowing after a little over one week of knowing each other, but Arthur’s never been good at giving a shit at what anyone else thinks. Eames had opened a door for him as well. Where Eames was blocking himself from happiness because of the world, Arthur was blocking himself from happiness because of some fucked up, meaningless vision of glory.

A gold medal is a chunk of gold. It’s a few brand deals, something to be proud of.

A gold medal isn’t someone to wake up to in the morning. A gold medal won’t make him feel loved. A gold medal won’t make him cry laughing, or hold him when he’s sad, or make him breakfast in bed, or buy a house with him, or grow _old_ with him.

But Eames just might.

When he steps out onto the platform finally, his normal tunnel vision isn’t there. Instead, the crowded room overwhelms him; faces seeming hyper-close, all of his senses buzzing.

His dad’s voice is back in his head, gnawing somewhere at the back of his consciousness.

 _Head up, eyes straight_ …

He looks forward, the synchronized swimming pool sparkling under the bright beams of sunlight from above, seeing American flags waved and people standing up to watch him. A sea of cameras are pointed up at him, ready to catch his victory or his second-time humiliation. He can almost hear the commentators now: ‘ _Will Arthur Cohen finally win his gold, or will be experience the same defeat he did four years ago_?”

Out of his periphery he sees someone to his left stand down by the barricade and his eyes follow the movement.

Broad shoulders, long arms, and in this moment, the same goofy grin that his heart has ached for despite all efforts for the past four years.

‘ _C’mon, darling,_ ’ he reads from Eames’s lips.

He stares forward again, feeling something warm and effervescent bubbling in his chest, making him weightless. Making him feel like he could fly.

And then, he does.

 

 

_“You know, Karen, I think this moment is going to be all over the internet within a few minutes.”_

_“You’re absolutely right Steve, and what a moment it was!”_

_“In case you’re just tuning in, after Arthur Cohen received his first gold medal for men’s solo ten meter platform diving, before the Star Spangled Banner even finished playing, he jumped off of the platform and basically sprinted over to the stands into the waiting arms of… you’re gonna want to sit down if you’re not already, folks… Team Great Britain member and two time gold medalist Cedric Eames!”_

_“Our cameras had to cut away early, Steve. It was getting a little too pg-13 for our family friendly evening show.”_

_“That it was, Karen. Talk about winning gold, though. Both Cohen and Eames leave Rio with a little something extra on top of their medals, if you know what I mean.”_

_“Now that’s an athletic power couple we can’t wait to see more from! We wish them all the happiness in the world, and many more gold medals in the future!”_

_“And now, back to you at the studio Cindy for our nightly Olympic recap!”_

 

***

 

Arthur leaves Rio with a gold medal and Eames, which are admittedly much better than a silver medal and a broken heart.

The rest of Rio is a whirlwind of interviews, press conferences, and parties. It isn’t until they have a layover in Miami that Eames has the opportunity to whisper into the sweaty skin of the back of Arthur’s shoulder:

“What made you change your mind, poppet?”

Arthur arches further into the starch-stiff decorative pillows on the hotel bed, smiling at the endearment and yawning languidly.

“Because four years ago, I said ‘after _we_ win our gold, we’ll figure it out’. Well we’ve both won our gold now, and I’m ready to figure this out. And,” he rests up on his forearms, turning his head to smile at Eames softly, “I forgive you.” He yawns again, collapsing back into the pillows. “Besides, four years later after a one week affair, here we are. Must mean something.”

“ _Something_ ,” Eames agrees languidly, draping himself against Arthur’s back, pressing him into the mattress, stretching his arms out on either side of them almost like he’s practicing his butterfly stroke.

“Something,” Arthur confirms.

He hears Eames’s breathing even out and doesn’t even care that he’s being squashed, content to bask in the warm heat radiating from Eames’s body.

He catches a glint of something gold and turns his head to look over at the wall where two gold medals hang on the coat rack, glinting softly in the dim lights from outside. For so long after London, winning his gold felt like he would be sacrificing his happiness. Or that if he decided to let himself be happy, he would lose the one thing he’s worked for every day for the past twenty years. Happiness or glory. It seemed like an impossible choice.

Eames snores lightly, his face buried in Arthur’s neck, and Arthur smiles radiantly.

Both, he decides, closing his eyes. He can have _both_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> I wrote this on a total whim inspired by [this](http://involuntaryorange.tumblr.com/image/148575117680) lovely sketch by involuntaryorange and also because I've been watching the Rio Olympics non-stop and procrastinating. 
> 
> (This was written within the first five days of the Olympics, by the way, so if a crazy hurricane hits and cancels the games or something equally as news-worthy before the games end and it's not mentioned here, that's why!) 
> 
> I don't claim to know anything about the actual sports beside what I gather from watching them on tv, as well as how the Olympics actually function/correct dates/etc. Originally Arthur was going to be a fencer but I changed it last minute because I didn't want to have to learn all the fancy fencing terminology.


End file.
